A variety of manufacturing methods exist for the production of inflatable floatation devices. Typically, a life preserving device is manufactured in such a configuration that enables the device to be put on over and around an individuals body in order to provide buoyancy and keep the individual afloat.
Such devices are usually constructed by joining a front panel and a rear panel of a singly woven fabric at their peripheries, thus forming a chamber. The chamber is capable of being inflated with a gas from a compressed gas container or some other inflation device in order to provide buoyancy.
The front and rear fabric panels may be joined by a variety of methods. Such joining mechanisms include heat set gluing, ultra-sonic welding or vulcanizing to permanently join the front and rear fabric panels. Methods such as those above typically result in a continuous seam around the outer periphery of the floatation device.
In many life preserving devices, it is desirable to also have a belt or a tying mechanism. Sewing of such additional features further necessitates a need for additional sealing around the sewing areas to prevent leakage of the inflating gas.
As a result of the variety of processes required in order to join the fabrics, as well as to provide belts or other fastening mechanisms, the floatation devices of the prior art typically require a number of steps in their production and manufacture. These added production steps complicate the manufacture of such devices and result in increased production costs.
Furthermore, the seam resulting from the various joining mechanisms can provide a structurally weakened area, increasing the potential for leakage of the inflation medium from the chamber of the device, thereby reducing the reliability of such floatation devices.